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As a reader I wish more genres were open to big loving standalone tomes. Just let me hang out in a huge story without having to wait for multiple books.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:36
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Sending out some inspiration to all of y'all.
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Jun 27, 2022 03:59
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Junpei posted:Sending out some inspiration to all of y'all. what do you think about that thing you posted
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Jun 27, 2022 04:55
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sebmojo posted:what do you think about that thing you posted I thought it was cute and inspiring and nice and I thought some of the people here could use that energy and encouragement, do you have a problem with that?
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Jun 27, 2022 05:02
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He wasn't trying to be confrontational, it's just that – as others have raised before – if you're gonna just post tumblr screencaps you should do it in a way that advances discussion.
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Jun 27, 2022 05:12
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Junpei posted:I thought it was cute and inspiring and nice and I thought some of the people here could use that energy and encouragement, do you have a problem with that? It's garbage, sorry, and if anyone is inspired by that they should punch themselves in the head until they have better epiphanies. "I had a negative comment that made me sad. I had a positive comment that made me happy." What an insight! There are no good writers? That's bullshit. That's cope. There are good writers and there are bad writers and enjoyment slash profit isn't really related to either quality which leads people to think the distinction is immaterial -- but everyone knows there are good and bad. If you're going to sit back and go, well, who cares about being a good writer, then maybe you'll just be writing slash fanfiction for the rest of your days while talking up the Perils Of Being A Writer for social media clout. Oh, your story comes from your emotions and life experiences so it can't be good or bad? Cope. The person who wrote that themselves proves that, for all their supposed quality-agnostic serenity, they'd much rather be seen as 'good' writer than a 'bad' one. Find better people to take advice and inspiration from. Find artists you respect and admire and learn from them. I've said it before, and it may have been when I stopped lurking this thread -- this crap is poison. Writing isn't cute or inspiring or nice -- it's work. You want to write something that won't get negative feedback? Keep a loving journal.
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Jun 27, 2022 06:03
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I think that post is kind of drawing a false dichotomy between "good" (skillful?) writing and writing that's emotionally affecting. Yes, a reader can enjoy and have positive emotional outcomes from writing that isn't the best in the world, but part of developing skill as a writer is in improving emotional effectiveness -- if your goal is to be sincere and heartfelt in prose, becoming stronger on your technical fundamentals isn't going to make that worse, in the same way that non-figurative visual art is improved by having a solid grasp of figurative basics. I understand that you're just trying to encourage people, but I think there's a very common fallacy of "I don't need to work on formal improvement, I just need to make readers happy." The former will help with the latter!
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Jun 27, 2022 06:23
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That's fair to say, Antivehicular-I wasn't necessarily trying to put down hard work or anything, but I can see how it would be misconstrued as that. Thanks.
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Jun 27, 2022 06:27
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Junpei posted:I thought it was cute and inspiring and nice and I thought some of the people here could use that energy and encouragement, do you have a problem with that? I do! It's not the type of content I would prefer in this subforum. Everyone here is capable of going to tumblr and twitter themselves. I talk about writing on this website because I'm interested in the insight of the people who post here, not other people. We have some brilliant writers who have worked hard to succeed at trad, self, and hobby-level publishing (or just hobby writing, tbh). I would rather hear from them, because I can engage them in conversation. I don't really mind the occasional meme (you didn't see me or seb griping about the potion one, for example) but like...writing inspiration from tumblr is about as useful as a commercial jingle.
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Jun 27, 2022 06:28
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I do think there's a core nugget in there that's valuable: you do not need approval to write. We sometimes act like being the Next Big Thing is the goal, but writing for your friends and family, or for your own amusement, or to blow off steam, these are all valid reasons to write. You do not need to be gunning single-mindedly for a career, that's just capitalist brainworms, art is good for its own sake.
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Jun 27, 2022 07:08
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For sure. Like I said in my post, I'm just as keen to hear from hobbyists as I am our pubbed authors. Write for whatever reasons you want, at any level you wish. either way, posting tumblr content might get you razzed in this thread!
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Jun 27, 2022 07:14
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I guess I'm just trying to like, demo what productive conversation from/around that sorta meme could look like? I had to unfollow all the #writing tags on tumblr because it tends towards extremely anodyne beginners' stuff, but we were all beginners some time and it doesn't hurt to engage with that level of discourse. Although like, please dude make it discourse instead of just hit and run posting a screenshot.
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Jun 27, 2022 09:37
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Antivehicular posted:I think that post is kind of drawing a false dichotomy between "good" (skillful?) writing and writing that's emotionally affecting. Yes, a reader can enjoy and have positive emotional outcomes from writing that isn't the best in the world, but part of developing skill as a writer is in improving emotional effectiveness -- if your goal is to be sincere and heartfelt in prose, becoming stronger on your technical fundamentals isn't going to make that worse, in the same way that non-figurative visual art is improved by having a solid grasp of figurative basics. I understand that you're just trying to encourage people, but I think there's a very common fallacy of "I don't need to work on formal improvement, I just need to make readers happy." The former will help with the latter! Another key thing about emotional responses is that it can have nothing to do with what you've written and everything to do with what the reader is bringing to the text. To use an example that has stuck with me from high school film class: you may include a red car because you think red cars look cool, the audience member might have a strong reaction to the red car because they were in a car accident featuring one. A good book can stir emotions in the reader. At the same time, a reader can have strong emotional reactions because of what they're carrying with them. In that sense, I feel like one could argue that putting the emphasis on the emotional responses of the audience meaning you're doing your job as a writer is yet another way of distancing yourself from the act of creating and the art of creation. You're basically just hoping to roll the hard six when you could be loading the dice. SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I do think there's a core nugget in there that's valuable: you do not need approval to write. We sometimes act like being the Next Big Thing is the goal, but writing for your friends and family, or for your own amusement, or to blow off steam, these are all valid reasons to write. You do not need to be gunning single-mindedly for a career, that's just capitalist brainworms, art is good for its own sake. This is the other thing. You don't need approval to write. You shouldn't be worrying about writing something good or something with mass market appeal until you've actually written something. Write what you want to write and let everything else attend to itself. I don't really think there's much productive conversation to have around that sort of memetic content for some of the reasons I've said before: it's trite, it's somehow both self-aggrandizing and self-effacing, and it takes one's attention away from writing. Like, we all know it. We've all seen those writing communities which are made up of people who talk endlessly about writing but can't even churn out a single chapter of their eternal WIPs. I've said before that I consider it like a form of radiation. It might not be harmful in small doses. Hell, it might even help you! But if you stick around in it, if you don't take proper precautions, you're going to end up with your hair and teeth falling out. All that said, I think it's important to keep in mind things like audience and marketability. It's all well and good to write for yourself or to write for art's sake, but it doesn't pay the bills. Or, to be less of a cliché, I don't think any text matters unless someone reads it. And as much as we like to say to ourselves that we're fine if only a single person reads our stuff, we all know that's not really true. All things being equal, we'd rather more people read our works than less and we'd rather people think positively about them than negatively. That doesn't mean you should have audience and marketability and that more product-driven side of things at the top of your list, but I think it's an important thing to learn and understand. Really not that different to the fundamentals Antivehicular mentions. To use an example, when I was in the final rounds of editing of this manuscript, an editor pal of mine was like 'I think this is a strong story but it just isn't marketable.' I asked what something more sellable would look like and he sent me a ten-chapter-or-so synopsis where he'd outlined a more conventional, for lack of a better term, version of the story. I think he was absolutely right. I also think it wasn't the story I wanted to tell or how I wanted to tell it. I also can't excuse anything with it's my feelings. But had I known now what I knew three or so years ago, would I have done anything differently? I'm not sure. Admittedly, my responses are colored by a few things. I spent a few years thinking that I wanted to have a popular readership following until I got a better insight into what that is like and understood I'd hate it. My time in the web novel space was enough to make me realize that I don't like fans. I want people to read my stuff and maybe say they liked it (from a distance) and that's it. Which isn't functionally dissimilar to no one reading it in the first place. I also work in the manga industry and I see just product after product after product which are all fundamentally the same story that places The Market over artistic value. I wrote fanfiction too and a lot of people liked my fanfiction. I still wish I'd make the jump to trying to be a Good Writer years earlier. Thing is, I think getting a good look into that engine has been the biggest part of making me okay with being a writing hobbyist. In that sense, I suppose I'd say that learning how to gun for a writing career is probably a key fundamental -- but you really need to figure out if that's what you want. But before you do that, you need to write. But I'm also a weird robot who has never let negative feedback like that get under my skin, so, my mindset may not be that simple for some people. Every person who has reached out to me has generally enjoyed what I write or left a response that made it clear they were upset because they otherwise liked the story. The idea that one person going 'You are not a good writer' might be enough to delete everything I wrote much less stop writing for two weeks... It comes back to that previous point. People are going to be much less harsh once you're not writing fanfiction, and inoculating yourself against that is something you need to get a handle on. It's like of all the agent rejections I've had over the past year or so, some have made me grumpy -- the idpol ones, basically. Some have bugged me, such as length, if only in that hubristic way of thinking maybe I should've listened to my editor friend. But I'd say only one has brought me down, and that's an agent who sent me a nice response that basically said they loved the query letter and the premise but found my "skill was not adequate to the promise of the concept."
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Jun 27, 2022 12:05
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That tumblr person sounds like they’re dealing with imposter syndrome, and like, tell yourself whatever you need to to keep writing, but the overall conclusion of “stop trying to be good” is Zen Pencils level bullshit Go hard at what you do and gently caress the haters is what shoulda been the takeaway, because who gives a solid poo poo about what driveby randos think when it’s impossible to please everybody. If feeling good about what you do doesn’t include getting better at what you do though, that’s just loving sad Milkfred E. Moore posted:Another key thing about emotional responses is that it can have nothing to do with what you've written and everything to do with what the reader is bringing to the text. To use an example that has stuck with me from high school film class: you may include a red car because you think red cars look cool, the audience member might have a strong reaction to the red car because they were in a car accident featuring one. A good book can stir emotions in the reader. At the same time, a reader can have strong emotional reactions because of what they're carrying with them. In that sense, I feel like one could argue that putting the emphasis on the emotional responses of the audience meaning you're doing your job as a writer is yet another way of distancing yourself from the act of creating and the art of creation. You're basically just hoping to roll the hard six when you could be loading the dice. This. We all write with the illusion that our intent will be perfectly clear so long as our prose is perfectly clear and strive to make it that way, but readers don’t work that way. You can work to reduce confusion, but it doesn’t guarantee someone will get your intentions because they bring their own baggage into the hotel room you’ve set up on the page. I’m currently reading this book Metaphors We Live By https://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff-ebook/dp/B009KA3Y6I and it mentions how the metaphor we Anglos use for communication that clouds how we think about it: - Ideas or Meanings are Objects - Words are Boxes - Communication is Sending So we tend to assume constructing a sentence is like packing a box and when we hand the box off to someone else they’ll pull all the objects out of the box in the right order and oh, “Ah yes, I see all the things you packed perfectly.” But this metaphor misconstrues how messy communication really is because our brains are sloppy messes. In that metaphor, the words are more like boxes that can’t be opened, and the receiver has to guess at the idea inside based on their own experience and influenced by the context in which they read it
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Jun 27, 2022 15:40
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I found the screencap saccharine and dumb. It's of a genre of internet tweets/tumblr/w/e that's like "This obviously true thing is actually not true and let me show you by jumping through a series of metaphysical hoops". Obviously there are good writers and good writing. "Good" does not just mean "mass approval". Again, obvious. That said, now that I've been spending a lot more time in in-person (zoom, whatever) writing groups, I see that the need for encouragement is real, even for people writing and delivering pieces regularly. When asked what their biggest writing struggle is, plenty of people give answers that amount to imposter syndrome. I'm not sure what to make of this exactly. I like encouragement but it's easy to feel meaningless when overdone. I think there's a school of thought that if constant encouragement with light critique gets people to continuously write, over a period of time they will naturally become better. Perhaps with the unsaid notion that very few people in any group will get published and so continuously writing and improving and sharing that with peers is the next best thing? Something else worth mentioning: I've noticed a huge amount of writing chat in this thread and the internet at large is about genre fiction. With a shocking (to me, who doesn't read it) amount being about fan-fiction, which I can only assume is way more dependent on getting people to read and like as part of the appeal. In person stuff I frequent is mostly literary fiction with a dose of sci-fi and the distinction between the two is much smaller than it seems online.
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Jun 27, 2022 17:00
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I do think it’s kind of a saccharine truism but, at the same time, if I had a “retroactively erase” button for all my published work I would’ve hit it several times by now, usually due to things I felt after particularly personal reviews or reactions to my work. And the occasional bit of fan mail does help fight that impulse. It may be obnoxiously plain but it’s also true. At least for me.
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Jun 27, 2022 17:08
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I find critical feedback motivating, because when it’s done well it gives me something concrete to work on that I know will improve my writing going forward. It builds my confidence. But if that’s all I ever heard, or the improvements needed felt completely out of reach, it would probably be discouraging. Empty praise doesn’t help either - I need to feel like I earned the things I’m doing well. I think at some point you just have to understand that you’re always going to get negative reactions to any creative endeavour. There isn’t a single piece out there with universally positive reception. With interpretation, it’s impossible to convey your intention the same for everyone. And not everyone will like what you’re going for to begin with! There’s a natural tendency to give outsized weight to negativity that you need to develop strategies to handle. ultrachrist posted:Something else worth mentioning: I've noticed a huge amount of writing chat in this thread and the internet at large is about genre fiction. With a shocking (to me, who doesn't read it) amount being about fan-fiction, which I can only assume is way more dependent on getting people to read and like as part of the appeal. In person stuff I frequent is mostly literary fiction with a dose of sci-fi and the distinction between the two is much smaller than it seems online. Regarding marketability, your options seem to be to aim for a crowd pleaser or to niche down into something underserved. Fan fiction is an interesting case because you have a lot more data to work with. You can figure out what broad appeal looks like given focus and tight constraints, and you can very directly compare your work against what other people are doing and their reception. That’s a lot harder with original works - you can look at other things that have been successful and try to take lessons from that, but you can’t get as specific as “the fan favourite pairing is characters A/B.” I don’t know that fan fiction is more focused on audience appeal, but rather that it’s possible to hit that target in a way that it just isn’t elsewhere.
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Jun 27, 2022 22:58
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Unless you're in self-pub, do not write to market. Trad turnaround times are so long that by the time it's out, it'll be passé. I targeted underserved stuff and I'm just now coming out as part of a wave of other people who did the exact same thing, and all of us started writing in like 2013–2015. Trad can haul rear end when they need to but they very rarely do, even after however many years in the query trenches, you're looking at a year minimum to hit shelves, probably closer to two. For me it was: first draft 2013, came back to/rewrote 2018–2019, agent November 2020, sold March 2021, came out two weeks ago. Think about Dystopian YA, how long that trend actually lasted vs how long people tried to beat that dead horse. Underserved markets though? Man in 2013 I started writing gay Māori pirates and the book came out the same month as Our Flag Means Death. We're riding a wave there was absolutely no way to predict. All of the trendy waves we're riding are the result of me writing a book I wanted to read that nobody else was writing.
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Jun 28, 2022 01:14
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Welp, guess I'll be lurking this thread. I read (much of) the OPs. Not as carefully as I ought to. I'll go back and reread them in more detail. But just what I skimmed answered a lot of the things I was gearing myself up to open an "I need a mentor" thread about somewhere. Without getting too E/N, I've wished my whole life that I could write fiction; it's like, the one big personal-accomplishment thing I've been spectacularly unsuccessful at. Like, I can draw, I can code, I can do physical stuff, I can write nonfiction, got books on shelves from comic books (that someone else wrote and I drew) to giant operating system manuals, but nothing I've actually successfully (or at least satisfyingly) written myself. Everything I've ever written and thought was a fresh idea I'd come up with on my own, I managed to retroactively identify later as something I'd seen in a Simpsons episode or some short story I'd read once in passing. (My last serious attempt was a comic about gay cowboys that I wrote and published about six months before Brokeback Mountain came out. A coup! you say. Well no, turns out I was just remembering and aping the original short story that I'd read as part of a class in college and thought nobody else would ever have seen. gently caress me) But I had a jarring buzzing sensation in my brain this morning as I listened to Robert Evans' podcast of the post-apocalyptic novel he wrote, and realized that even if it's pulpy garbage, it's keenly self-aware about it, and more importantly it's him wanting his brain to do something creative and worthwhile even while he's in the middle of doing something that's already very good (his regular podcast and journalism), just not fictional. I've struggled for years to explain to people "what do I want", because I don't have an answer. I don't really want things, aside from wanting to be able to write fiction. Which makes it difficult for me to think of something to write about. Lately I've been toying with the idea of writing about anhedonia or not being able to understand love or being a coding dork with five jobs, but those don't sound like very interesting things to read about. (Besides then I feel like I'm just imitating Abe Simpson on a roller coaster going "eeeehhhh".) But maybe this is an angle I can approach it from. I want my brain to do something creative and worthwhile. That's a thing I can be comfortable with wanting. Because then it's not just self-focused and theoretically serves a purpose. So anyway there's nothing I could ask right now that isn't already addressed a million times over in the OPs alone, so I'll just be over here.
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Jun 28, 2022 14:04
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Data Graham posted:
I would suggest that you can. Sure, it's annoying to find you keep being derivative, but unless you're lifting dialogue wholesale from the source material, you're still creating. A bunch of extremely good stories have built on the creations of people who have come before. But also, consider joining this: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3989882 If nothing else, perhaps the constantly changing prompts will cause you to create something that you feel happier about.
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Jun 28, 2022 14:36
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Data Graham posted:Everything I've ever written and thought was a fresh idea I'd come up with on my own, I managed to retroactively identify later as something I'd seen in a Simpsons episode or some short story I'd read once in passing. (My last serious attempt was a comic about gay cowboys that I wrote and published about six months before Brokeback Mountain came out. A coup! you say. Well no, turns out I was just remembering and aping the original short story that I'd read as part of a class in college and thought nobody else would ever have seen. gently caress me) Some people (me, I'm one of them) wear their influences and blends on their fuckin' sleeve and will talk up what they're blending super obnoxiously. Some will try and obfuscate, because they don't want people to see the 'seams' for whatever reason. Some aren't consciously aware of the things they mash together, and refuse to acknowledge where they pulled poo poo from. None are more right than any other, and none are more or less creative than any other. If you're writing fiction at all, you're creating. Even if it's someone else's concept, or someone else's structure, or someone else's concept AND structure. Just keep writing--and be sure to put in work to edit--and you're fiiiine. You'll develop ways to accentuate your voice and pull out your own uniqueness over time and effort, and none of it will come without being blunt and awkward and ugly at first.
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Jun 28, 2022 16:31
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Data Graham posted:Lately I've been toying with the idea of writing about anhedonia or not being able to understand love or being a coding dork with five jobs, but those don't sound like very interesting things to read about. (Besides then I feel like I'm just imitating Abe Simpson on a roller coaster going "eeeehhhh".) Look, you can write what you want, but I can tell you from experience that writing characters struggling with a lack of emotion/ennui/anhedonia is writing on Extreme Hard Mode. It's hard enough to tell a story when your characters have clear goals and desires; it's infinitely harder when you have to pull them along by the plothairs because they don't want to leave the house. Ultimately, you should write whatever you want, and if you're excited by ennui(?), then go for it. Just don't get discouraged if it feels like a struggle, because you've picked one of the hardest approaches to character and it can only get easier.
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Jun 28, 2022 16:50
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Wungus posted:So the thing about being part of a communal species that exchanges art as a means of communication is that every single """idea""" is built on the backs of all the ideas that came before. Bar some bullshit bad faith 'gotcha' type fuckery, you cannot create in a bubble, and you cannot write without influence. When you read stories and go "oh my god this is so unique" what you're really reading is a clever combination of external influences; a cool movie, a friend's anecdote about their ex, a wild dream built by the subconscious need to unpack and understand nonsensical combinations of waking stimuli, a forums post. The trick behind most good writing is that at some point in the process (and it's definitely not always the first draft) the author said "hey actually let me kind of explore this in a new direction/abstract this in a different way/mash this into something else." Certainly, and I know that as a reader one of the funnest things is identifying people's influences, saying "heeeyyy I know what he's doing there" or "I bet she is referencing X". Part of all this is that I'm trying to develop as full a cultural awareness and education as is possible within a lifetime, i.e. I consider the otherwise arbitrary and evasive point of "growing up" to be the point at which there aren't any jokes that go over your head anymore. Hell, just immersing oneself in memes and going "haha I would like to smell them" or something is part of the same dragon-chasing experience, the satisfaction of "getting it". But at the same time I'm way oversensitive about it because I feel like I'm way too overdependent on references and parroting jokes I heard somewhere without even knowing the context; to the point where I feel like it's a legit problem, a real deficiency in my imagination. There are forms of creativity I've never been able to begin to grasp, like coming up with names or plots or character motivations. One time on that cowboy thing I agonized for like two weeks thinking of a name for the guy that wouldn't be a super-obvious cowboy name from pop culture that people would think I was referencing (and wouldn't sound like me just going "Bart, Cart, Dart, E-art..."). Finally I went "aha!" and settled on Shane, and went to print with that. Only then did I learn ....  It goes all the way back. Like as a kid my brother was always way more inventive, just effortlessly coming up with universes out of the blue, and all I could do was cluelessly imitate him thinking there was a magic formula or something. I'll quote something by way of example: Data Graham posted:Hell, unintentionally even. Kids pay attention to what the adults around them are doing and saying and try to imitate them. I remember when I was like 8 and my brother (who was always way more naturally funny than me) was 6, he picked up on our parents grumbling about some local politician named Walsh, and he disappeared into his room and came back with this: So my whole life I've been desperately trying to prove to myself that I can do it on my own, or more to the point, that if I'm making references and allusions I'm doing it because I want to, not because I have to. So (re: ^^) if I want to grab hold of something that seems unexplored, like ennui (if only because it's the only thing I feel like I have enough experience with to write about, like who the hell writes about being a meth lord or a mob boss and pulls it off), it's probably as much because I imagine that means it's a new idea as because nobody in their right mind would ever choose to write about it. I'm a mess of conflicting motivations and self-defeating mental blocks, and as I writhe my way through them I create new ones to stick right in my own path so I don't have to keep fighting in that exhausting direction anymore. Part of why I decided to turn to goons is that I have very few real-life influences or mentors I can trust. The only person I can speak to in RL always has the same extremely specific advice to give and I've just recently decided it's completely useless because his own tastes are so idiosyncratic that they'll only get me in trouble. So I hope y'all can indulge a bit of inevitable aimless whining, and hope it's not the first time the thread's seen it.
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Jun 28, 2022 17:10
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Wungus posted:So the thing about being part of a communal species that exchanges art as a means of communication is that every single """idea""" is built on the backs of all the ideas that came before. Bar some bullshit bad faith 'gotcha' type fuckery, you cannot create in a bubble, and you cannot write without influence. When you read stories and go "oh my god this is so unique" what you're really reading is a clever combination of external influences; a cool movie, a friend's anecdote about their ex, a wild dream built by the subconscious need to unpack and understand nonsensical combinations of waking stimuli, a forums post. The trick behind most good writing is that at some point in the process (and it's definitely not always the first draft) the author said "hey actually let me kind of explore this in a new direction/abstract this in a different way/mash this into something else." I like these sentiments a lot.
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Jun 28, 2022 17:39
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Data Graham posted:There are forms of creativity I've never been able to begin to grasp, like coming up with names or plots or character motivations. One time on that cowboy thing I agonized for like two weeks thinking of a name for the guy that wouldn't be a super-obvious cowboy name from pop culture that people would think I was referencing (and wouldn't sound like me just going "Bart, Cart, Dart, E-art..."). Finally I went "aha!" and settled on Shane, and went to print with that. Only then did I learn .... You can do similar things with character motivations. https://springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/character-motivation.htm as an example will just throw character motivations up. As for plots, like, there's a million resources for plots if you want to go hard with planning. Go read up on the seven basic plots, or on the hero's journey, or dan harmon's story circle, or on the save the cat outline, or a three or five or seven act structure, or the six question screenwriting flow or... Ultimately, plots tend to be "a character wants a thing and can't have it because of reasons." If you can get a motivation (see above, there's nothing wrong with a generator) then you're a long way towards making a whole-rear end story. Every single writer has strengths and weaknesses, and writing's hard work. Take whatever shortcuts you need to get to the part where you write, and edit until it's either not hogshit or you shelve it and move on to another project.
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Jun 28, 2022 17:50
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Turns out Shane is an extremely well-known Western (and title character)
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Jun 28, 2022 18:11
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Wungus posted:You'll have to enlighten me as to what you learned because Shane is a fine name? Also a fuckin' lot of writers (including ones you've read and enjoyed!) just use name generators to name characters; either picking the results directly or morphing them a little bit. https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ is a cool resource for that. Shane (1953) is one of the most famous westerns, and the character's name is in one of the most famous movie lines/scenes of all time.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:14
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I don’t know if this was the exact phrase I really liked in here recently, but “Write what you want to write” is pretty impactful for me in my current time and place. It’s quite simple but I think defeats a lot of those self-imposed blocks. Don’t set out to find the golden niche and only accept that your first draft of your first story must be a perfectly brilliant success or the whole thing (and you by extension) are a failure. Write what you want, what works for you. Maybe it works out, maybe not, but getting in the habit of just doing it will take you further than endless fretting. I say this as someone who has haunted this thread with no real contributions to the discussion and no produced writing in…15 years, really. I have the idea and some supporting pieces and then sit and torture myself endlessly. For the first time in years I actually feel like pursuing it further, and I can finally accept that maybe no one else will read it or give a single gently caress but I’ll put it out into the world because it’s something I have a weird, deep-seated desire to pursue. And at least it will be out of my brain. I’d be tickled pink if someone did read it and didn’t hate it, but I’m finally where that isn’t the central motive. That last bit to say you may have to work on yourself and your mental health some to get a healthier perspective and approach. None of this is technically easy, but you shouldn’t hate it. Nor fear it, really.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:19
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If you told everyone in this thread to rewrite Brokeback Mountain from memory, you'd end up with every single one being completely different with the only real through-line being "gay cowboys", a wide and infinitely repeatable concept. Coincidences like names are trivial to fix. The things you're worrying about are things that paralyze people before writing. Not to say they go away completely when you're actively writing, but they tend to get superseded by "how the gently caress do i make this sentence work?"
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Jun 28, 2022 18:26
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I just gotta say that having done some research those name generator sites are super unreliable for real world names in languages other than English. Baby name sites too are full of nonsense.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:32
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Data Graham posted:
Most of your comments are focused on other people's reactions when you share your work alongside some self-biographical comments. Very little is focused on the craft of writing, such as how to pace a plot, or write a convincing character. I think you are getting too focused on the reaction your work will get rather than.. the actual work. I think writing is really divided amongst the actual act of writing, and the act of sharing your work. Both are valid skills to have, and are tough to develop and practice. What I might suggest is to write a journal/short-story that is for you. Hell, go crazy and make it a memoir, or self-insert character. Don't worry about other peoples reactions just yet. Get used to the act of writing and don't even care about the sharing part just yet.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:44
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Probably a good idea. I used to write pages and pages every day when I had a blog, but it was all (as you say) playing to an audience, not just doing something for my own satisfaction. That's probably what I need to practice.
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Jun 28, 2022 18:51
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Data Graham posted:
Zeroing on this because ennui is possibly one of the most explored concepts in writing  truly, history is a nightmare from which we all are trying to wakeThere is no shortcut to originality. I don't think originality is a useful goal for a writer. I think you might develop (or accidentally stumble upon) something original or unique to your voice, but it's only going to happen through writing a lot. A lot. A lot of bad words, derivative words, a lot of false starts and farcical gimmicks. It's like anything in life—if you want to access control of your craft, you have to put the brain hours into exploring it. You have to hone the basics. You have to understand why your brain is influenced by some things and not others. I've written probably a million+ words of fiction and only a tiny fraction of that is anything I would consider to be remotely worth anyone's time. My goal that I set in 2012 was to be a publishable writer by the time I was 35. I'm turning 34 this year, to give you an idea of how long I think a person can simply practice with no other immediate goals. And I'm only just starting to feel like I can do things on purpose, with precision and control. Write what you want, a lot.
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Jun 28, 2022 19:34
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Instead of stressing yourself out about being "original," it may help you to think about how you can combine tropes or setting elements in a novel way (like Naomi Novik combining Horatio Hornblower and dragon riders in her Temeraire series), or pull something from one publishing category into another (like Eoin Colfer taking the supervillain protagonist out of superhero comics and into middle-grade fantasy). Maybe it's a more standard story, but with a kind of protagonist we don't see a lot of (a janitor, a grandma, a social worker).
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Jun 28, 2022 19:54
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General Battuta posted:I just gotta say that having done some research those name generator sites are super unreliable for real world names in languages other than English. Baby name sites too are full of nonsense.
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Jun 28, 2022 20:53
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General Battuta posted:I just gotta say that having done some research those name generator sites are super unreliable for real world names in languages other than English. Baby name sites too are full of nonsense. Olympic team rosters give a set of first and last names to match any given country and time frame (within the era of the modern olympics)
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Jun 28, 2022 21:00
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To be creative start by being bland, obvious and boring- the more the better. Then change aspects of what you have come up with. One at a time. At some point you will feel a little twinge of interest inside yourself. Follow that thought for five minutes, then start writing.
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Jun 28, 2022 21:02
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Also, remember that a good story is 1% ideas and 99% implementation. All the great ideas in the world won't save you if you can't execute them smoothly. Ideally your stories will be both well-executed and novel, but if you can only manage one, it's better for them to be well-executed and derivative than novel and bad.
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Jun 28, 2022 21:26
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Originality is when you, instead of picking one idea and copying it, steal five ideas you like and mash them all together.
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Jun 28, 2022 21:42
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Imho write what you want to read. Do you, personally, want to read a book about ennui? Because if you don't, your readers are unlikely to enjoy the experience. Originality comes from your voice and your perspective, so unless you are actively stealing stuff, don't sweat it. You can scrupulously avoid all references to everything ever and someone will still say you homaged some 60s deepcut marvel comic you've never heard of. Focus on writing what you want to read about, and it will mitigate at least some of the slog of actually writing.
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Jun 28, 2022 21:55
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